[annatar1914]

Naive infantile blathering but that is to be expected when 'Left-Wing' Communism is an infantile disorder.

Are you kidding? People like you are the reason why Lenin wrote that in the first place

Lenin could not have been clearer:

"Dictatorship is state power based directly on violence."

Government 101; All government pre-Socialism is based directly on violence, because the power of the State serves the narrow interests of a minority, the ruling class. With Socialism, you have a ''Dictatorship of the Proletariat'' that is composed of the ''State of the Whole People'', representing everyone.

Which do you think is more violent in practice; a popular regime representing all the working people, or a regime representing the wealthy? The Soviet Union leadership made many bloody and stupid mistakes for many years, as all revolutionaries turned rulers do, and they had to face a huge amount of opposition. But violence as an end unto itself? That's an Anti-Communist caricature.

A dictatorship of the proletariat is state power based directly on violence.

Again, not as an end unto itself, but to counteract counter-revolution.


All of this btw, has nothing to do with the fact that a real Leftist is absolutely in favor of the people's right to bear arms.

[Eauz]

It is only the SJW who are opposed to gun ownership. It's an irrational belief that has overtaken our society.

[ingliz]

to counteract counter-revolution.

Correct, but when you say that I don't see how you can argue Lenin thought arming the masses was a good idea.

That's an Anti-Communist caricature.

Don't be silly.

[The workers] have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!... The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class. . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy.

As Marx said democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself: Government ownership alone doesn't create socialism.

[Sivad]

gulagist minutia is who gives a fuck.

[Pants-of-dog]

*takes drink*

[Sivad]

*takes drink*

be prepared for a blackout bender then because as long as you bullshit gulagists are spewing gulagist bullshit I'm gonna be calling bullshit on your gulagisms.

[annatar1914]

@ingliz

Correct, but when you say that I don't see how you can argue Lenin thought arming the masses was a good idea.

I can, because that's what Lenin did think.

Don't be silly.



As Marx said democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself: Government ownership alone doesn't create socialism.

I see, by quoting Trotsky, you know all about counter-revolution, quoting the Enemy of the Soviet Union and the Russian People, who tirelessly worked for his British paymasters before and during WWI and throughout the period of the Bolshevik Revolution, until his treachery was stopped at last in Mexico City...

True Democracy, having a true Republic, exists when there is economic democracy along with political democracy. It requires a strong hand during the transition period, yes, but for an aim towards the greater good.

For this reason, I do not know if people are even capable of having or sustaining such a transition, or that they ever will be.

But as for me I'm with the People, made in the Image of God, and the common good, not the Rich and private interests, I support their right to the means of resisting the criminal, the bandit, the invader, the tyrant and usurper, all the despoilers both foreign and domestic.

Well, that's the last post for about a month.

[ingliz]

@annatar1914

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun... Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."

Mao

[Pants-of-dog]

be prepared for a blackout bender then because as long as you bullshit gulagists are spewing gulagist bullshit I'm gonna be calling bullshit on your gulagisms.

Well, I may as well since you are not making any arguments or criticisms.

[ingliz]

I can, because that's what Lenin did think.

No.

Only the 'workers' were to be be armed.

... by raising the vast mass of proletarians and semi-proletarians to the art of state administration, to the use of the whole state power.

The peasantry made up roughly 85 percent of the population so 15%, if that.

And Lenin was not proposing disorganised, individual ownership à l'américaine either but disciplined, organised, communist militias - military formations under military discipline.

violence means neither a fist nor a club, but troops.

[Drlee]

And Lenin was not proposing disorganised, individual ownership à l'américaine either but disciplined, organised, communist militias - military formations under military discipline.

Perhaps he got the idea here:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

It was followed by this:

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution:

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

Yes. I'll bet that is where he got it. Unlike some US folks these days though, Lenin could read.

[albionfagan]

No. Despite the Amercian NRA being a massively right-wing organisation and the de facto representation of the gun lobby round the world, there are varying views on this across politics.

Personally think it's stupidity to allow guns to be sold to anybody but it's not that high up on my priorities, USA is not my country and no change is likely.

[annatar1914]

No.

Only the 'workers' were to be be armed.

Well, that's pretty much everybody, so...

The peasantry made up roughly 85 percent of the population so 15%, if that.

Peasantry is one of the laboring classes, so that wasn't a problem either. Nor is it with any real and sane Marxist Leninist today.

And Lenin was not proposing disorganised, individual ownership à l'américaine

I don't know if you've read the Second Amendment, but if you haven't;

''A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.''

A well regulated Militia... Means people keep their arms at home, and regularly drill with others in military arms and tactics, marksmanship, safety, etc... Much like in say, Switzerland.

either but disciplined, organised, communist militias - military formations under military discipline.

Right, exactly, the whole people, the working classes.

[ingliz]

that wasn't a problem

Being small capitalists, peasants had no interest in socialism. They were not devoted to the Bolshevik cause. They saw the revolution as an opportunity to loot their neighbors, exploit capitalist modes of production, and make a profit.

The fight for socialism is a fight against the rule of capital. It is being carried on first and foremost by the wage-workers.

[Victoribus Spolia]

peasants had no interest in socialism.

Wasn't this an in-house debate amongst commies? Eh, @annatar1914 and @Potemkin?

It seems some strains of marxist thought viewed the peasantry as part of the proletariat whereas others viewed them as "proto-proletariats" that needed to first be lifted to that level (this will be an interesting topic in my ancap/feudalism discussion with you annatar, when the times comes)..

If this is the case, it seems hardly fair @ingliz to make the question of whether orthodox marxism believes in the arming of the working class as a general statement to be true or false solely on a VERY specific internal debate that seems to apply only to places like early 20th century Russia.

For instance, if the arming of the working class is a doctrine of orthodox marxism, and you happen to be correct that the peasantry is to be excluded from the "working class", what bearing would this really have on modern nations like the United States anyway or the subject of the poll? It would still imply mass armament with military grade weapons in a way that would make 2nd amendment extremists and NRA members leap for joy. Which was my point.

Does this imply that gun ownership is viewed as a natural right in marxism in a manner akin to ancaps and libertarians? No, of course not. Such view the natural right as universal and not limited to class for the purposes of revolution; however, in practice, the mass arming of the majority in most nations would nonetheless be a shared, albeit limited, value.

The other debate seems to be how to interpret Lenin's notion of the "vanguard" v. Luxemburg's broader view, but that debate is not much different than @Drlee's interpretation of the 2nd amendment v. my own; which I will now address.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

@Drlee

When annatar1914 said this below;

A well regulated Militia... Means people keep their arms at home, and regularly drill with others in military arms and tactics, marksmanship, safety, etc

I believe he was correctly explaining the notion behind the second amendment.

The implications of this being that mass armament of the general populace of the United States for the purpose of them being easily rallied to arms was the intention. I would agree with this and this is definitely consistent with the natural law philosophy of the framers that believed that government was a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.

In fact, many founding fathers opposed enumerating ANY rights in a bill of rights because they feared this would be construed as implying that these were the "only" rights and were to be narrowly conceived. This was a concern because the founder affirmed that these rights were broad and to be retained independently of a state. In this regard, your interpretation is not conservative.

In fact, your interpretation of the second amendment seems contrary to this natural law framework altogether because it assumes the existence of the state for the right to make any sense; however, "the maintaining and preserving of one's rights through the preservation of collective good via mass armament; whether the U.S. exists or not" needs to be the interpretive basis of this amendment. Once you do this, I think you will find that your conclusions do not follow from your premises.

Likewise, one should take into account the approach to the military as developed by founders. The Jeffersonian doctrine that we held as a nation until the time between the Union Draft and the "Great White Fleet" was that of military disarmament after a conflict. This policy was based on the belief, by the founders, that any standing military on U.S. soil during a time of peace would be a threat to the liberty of the people. After every war, the U.S, ships would be de-commissioned via a stripping of their arms and made into merchant vessels and guns were either stored, retained by the veterans, or destroyed.

The reason I bring this up is important, because your understanding of a "militia" is based on a modern notion of a standing military reserve, like our national guard; however, this was not the historic context in which the militia was originally conceived in the Revolutionary War; nor, would this interpretation make sense given the policy of mass disarmament that the United States held for at least half of its history.

The idea was clearly that a militia could be called into service at any time when the collective liberty was threatened because the arms would have been retained en masse. IT WAS NOT a standing army, an idea the founders specifically opposed.

Hence, the natural right of one's own defense was recognized as essential for the collective protection of the individual rights of the body politik.

[ingliz]

If... you happen to be correct that the peasantry is to be excluded from the "working class", what bearing would this really have on modern nations like the United States anyway or the subject of the poll?

Obviously, in the transition to socialism, in a fully proletarianised late-capitalist society such as the US, only the politically reliable elements of the "working class" will be armed to defend the revolution.

[Victoribus Spolia]

only the politically reliable elements of the "working class" will be armed to defend the revolution.

That does seem like a very narrow interpretation of the "Vanguardist" position of Lenin; though in the actual execution of the revolution (the initital seizing of power as an act of defense against bourgeois aggression), mass armament seems to be the ideal, both from common sense and from revolutionary Marxists themselves.

If your point is only that, after seizing such power, that in the struggle against the threat of counter-revolutionaries, that the "people's government" ends up seeing the banning of mass armament as a necessary evil. I don't think that is really denied by anyone and history has born out that this is exactly what has happened under every communist regime.

However, that is not what this poll was about.

[Potemkin]

It seems some strains of marxist thought viewed the peasantry as part of the proletariat whereas others viewed them as "proto-proletariats" that needed to first be lifted to that level (this will be an interesting topic in my ancap/feudalism discussion with you annatar, when the times comes)..

Indeed. In fact, not all of the peasantry were "small capitalists", as ingliz characterises them. The vast majority had no land and no ownership of the means of agricultural production. They were proto-proletarians rather than proto-capitalists. The "small capitalist" or proto-bourgeois segment of the peasantry were labelled 'kulaks' by the Soviet government, and Stalin set out to systematically liquidate them as a class during the collectivisation of agriculture in the early 1930s. He largely succeeded, though it exacerbated a famine in 1932-3 and caused huge numbers of casualties and social and economic dislocations. The kulaks were, as an identified class enemy, to be disarmed and the poorer segments of the peasantry were to be armed and organised as militias to expropriate the kulaks, by force if need be.

There is also the point that the Russian working class, as a relatively newly created social class, still had close links with the rural peasantry, and were often themselves peasants who had drifted into the cities in search of work in the new factories. The urban proletariat and the (lower segments of the) rural peasantry could not be disentangled, and certainly could not be set against each other as class enemies, as ingliz seems to be implying. When Trotsky made a similar attempt to distinguish between the urban proletariat and the poor rural peasantry, Lenin had to sharply remind him that Soviet power rested on twin pillars - the workers and the peasants. If even one of those pillars were to collapse, then Soviet power would fall. It is no accident that the symbol of Soviet power was the hammer and the sickle superposed on each other.

If this is the case, it seems hardly fair @ingliz to make the question of whether orthodox marxism believes in the arming of the working class as a general statement to be true or false solely on a VERY specific internal debate that seems to apply only to places like early 20th century Russia.

Precisely. In nations such as Britain there is no peasantry as a class, and even in the USA it barely exists. There is therefore no problem with arming them as well as the working class. Even if they oppose the working class, they lack the numbers to be a serious threat to them.

[SolarCross]

Precisely. In nations such as Britain there is no peasantry as a class, and even in the USA it barely exists. There is therefore no problem with arming them as well as the working class. Even if they oppose the working class, they lack the numbers to be a serious threat to them.

Rural workers still exist though? There aren't huge numbers of them because farms are heavily mechanised these days but they still exist.

[ingliz]

They were proto-proletarians

Only because they had no opportunity to exercise their capitalistic instincts.

the poorer segments of the peasantry were to be armed and organised as militias to expropriate the kulaks, by force if need be.

Given that opportunity the poor peasantry were overwhelmingly proto-capitalists, scrambling to exploit the dispossessed.

Stalin thought them incorrigible.

kulaks... Stalin set out to systematically liquidate them as a class

Stalin set out to systematically liquidate the peasantry as a class.